The Very Old in 19th-Century Switzerland: Examining Verified Outliers at the Top of the Historical Age Distribution

Abstract By the end of the 19th century, only a very small proportion of the population reached an age of 90 years or more. Few studies have followed up in detail on particularly old people around 1900, because data quality is often not verifiable. Thanks to a rare individual data source of all Swiss nonagenarians (people aged 90 or over) in the census years 1888 and 1900 carefully verified by national and local authorities, we investigate whether there were residential hot spots, and whether there were differences according to sex, urbanity, linguistic region, or residential altitude. The sources also contain subjective assessments of living conditions and health status. We analyzed verified nonagenarians in Switzerland for the census years 1888 ( n = 493, born before 1798) and 1900 ( n = 563, born before 1810). Nonagenarians were accounting for 0.02% of the population. Among nonagenarians, there were more women than man. Compared to the general population, more nonagenarians than expected lived in rural areas, in the Latin part of Switzerland, as well as at higher altitudes. Hot spots of districts with a particularly high number of nonagenarians were identified in French–speaking western Switzerland, as well as in alpine southern Switzerland, especially in Italian–speaking Ticino. Contribution : We show that certain patterns for very old people may have been the same then as now. If confirmed, the reasons should be investigated more closely and in an interdisciplinary manner, because this would enable important conclusions to be drawn about longevity both today and in the future.